'What is a woman?' The question that has plagued British media and politicians over the past decade culminated in a Supreme Court ruling that declared ‘womanhood’ was based on biological sex. Now, finally, WE KNOW WHAT A WOMAN IS. Headlines told us this was a historical moment for women and feminism, but with misogyny becoming more and more mainstream and male violence on the rise, what has the ruling actually achieved? Three months on, Media Storm compares the real-life impact of the Supreme Co...
Jul 03, 2025•52 min•Season 6Ep. 8
As the US military intervenes in another Middle East conflict, we’re told it’s because Iran is harbouring weapons of mass destruction (in contradiction to US intelligence). We’re also told forced regime change will ‘liberate’ women from Islamic tyranny. WMDs? Operation Freedom? Haven’t we heard these justifications before? To start, we look at lessons for the media from the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and re-centre Iranian women in debates about their fates. After the break: ‘NOTHING IS OFF LIMITS’ i...
Jun 26, 2025•52 min•Season 6Ep. 7
This week is Refugee Week, a time to celebrate the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary. And here at Media Storm, we can't do it without delving into media hypocrisy when reporting on the group. Why do closed borders not work - and why, in the face of hard evidence, do politicians still continue to ignore the facts and figures on displacement? We’re joined in the studio by Ugandan model and transgender refugee rights activist, Amanda Kamanda, and Ir...
Jun 19, 2025•46 min•Season 6Ep. 6
It's time for another News Watch, helping you get your head around the headlines. Locals face-off law enforcement in LA, as Trump sends the military to flatten (or fan up) protests. Meanwhile, Western media are dodging terms like ‘authoritarian’ better than their reporters are dodging police bullets. Assisted dying is back in the headlines as legalisation goes through UK and France’s parliaments. Disabled people and terminally ill people are often pitched on opposite sides of the debate: how do ...
Jun 12, 2025•52 min•Season 6Ep. 5
How do we 'cancel' Fascism without censorship? Can we protect free speech as well as fact-checking? This week, something different: we dive deep into social justice theory and question how to actually achieve it. Media Storm brings missing expert voices into the conversation. These are normally people with lived experience, but as politics becomes evermore polarised, we sought out a world-class philosopher to help us rise above partisanship and understand the core questions driving division. AC ...
Jun 05, 2025•39 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Let’s talk about how the media is fuelling the rise of Reform. This is not a new topic. The News Agents called it a "lefty cop-out" to blame the media for the rise of Reform. But what about the media cop-outs? What about the media's refusal to change, even as the Far-Right returns to the mainstream? The truth, Media Storm argues, is this: our media did not just fuel the rise of Reform, they cashed in on it. So on this week's episode, while Mathilda struggles with corrupted live show audio (sorry...
May 29, 2025•11 min•Season 6Ep. 3
Warning: this episode contains mentions of baby loss. Three years ago, we brought you the story of a Nigerian fishing community suing Shell in UK courts over oil spills. This year marks 10 years since their battle began, and the year it finally goes to trial. The Niger Delta is one of the ten most important wetland ecosystems in the world, home to some 31 million people. But the river that sustains so many lives of so many species has become poisoned over decades by oil. Environmental justice is...
May 22, 2025•40 min•Season 6Ep. 2
LAST CHANCE TO GET YOUR LIVE SHOW TICKETS! Media Storm is back for SERIES 6! And we’re here to help you get your head around the headlines (however unhinged they are). But this week, we had a little identity crisis… should we be using the term ‘mainstream media’ when it’s become such a conspiracy buzzword? And if not, how do we point out all the mainstream media mishaps?! Let us know your thoughts... Stories we delve into this week include: Two post-Brexit trade deals got very different reaction...
May 15, 2025•46 min•Season 6Ep. 1
Date: Tue 20 May 2025 Location: The Podcast Show, Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street London N1 0QH Doors Open: 18:30 | Show Begins: 19:00 (1hr) GET YOUR TICKETS | ACCESSIBLE TICKETS | AMEX TICKETS The descent to dictatorship, the ‘invasion’ of borders, the war on free speech… what’s a global crisis, and what’s just another media storm? Join co-hosts Helena Wadia and Mathilda Mallinson – and special guests Natasha Devon and Milo Edwards – as they storm through the most unhinged headlines o...
May 05, 2025•48 sec
Join us for the Media Storm LIVE SHOW with special guests Natasha Devon and Milo Edwards - Tuesday 20th May 7pm @ the Business Design Centre in Islington. Tickets are available HERE! Kim, an asylum seeker from Zimbabwe, lives on £7-a-day while supporting a newborn in cockroach-infested accommodation… HOW is she supposed to pay the £10,000 NHS bill she received after giving birth? This week, Kim shares her story, and the Media Storm team unpack the mainstream media myths that feed the wider healt...
Apr 18, 2025•39 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Join us for the Media Storm LIVE SHOW! Tuesday 20th May 7pm, @ the Business Design Centre in Islington. Tickets available HERE Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically. This week, Katy Perry was blasted - into space, and in the media (4:50). As news broke that the Supreme Court ruled the legal definition of a woman is based on 'biological sex' (a ruling that didn't consul...
Apr 17, 2025•50 min
Join us for the Media Storm LIVE SHOW! Tuesday 20th May 7pm @ the Business Design Centre in Islington. Tickets are available at 10am today via AEG Presents HERE! Paid Patreon subscribers get access to tickets ONE HOUR EARLIER at 9am What’s the bigger threat to free speech: the ‘woke mob’, or the MAGA word police? Where’s the line between free speech and hate speech? How can you have free market of ideas - when most of the media is owned by political suck-ups? Is free speech actually free if some...
Apr 11, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Join us for the Media Storm LIVE SHOW! Tuesday 20th May 7pm, @ the Business Design Centre in Islington. Tickets available at 10am on Friday via AEG Presents HERE Paid Patreon subscribers get access to tickets ONE HOUR EARLIER at 9am - support us on Patreon and get early access! Content warning: Rape and sexual assault. If you need support you can contact Rape Crisis on 0808 500 2222 Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mains...
Apr 10, 2025•49 min
Warning: this episode contains mentions of suicide. If you need support, contact the Samaritans on 116 123 Reports of image-based sexual abuse in the UK have increased tenfold over the past few years. Women are five times more likely to be victims of intimate image abuse. The true scale of the problem is probably larger, as many victims do not come forward. But sensationalist headlines about so-called 'revenge porn' are doing a disservice to survivors. The term 'revenge' welcomes victim-blaming,...
Apr 04, 2025•42 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically. So many media storm’s blowing up our radar this week! The ICE abduction of a Turkish PhD student in the US (01:17); a coordinated effort by the Times, Telegraph, TalkTV, GB News, and Robert Jenrick to mislead the public about new sentencing guidelines (5:02); meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene and her MAGA friends blame migrants, B...
Apr 03, 2025•45 min
We live in the age of sanctions - with Trump dishing out punitive foreign policy willy-nilly, and Russia’s war in Ukraine attracting more sanctions then the next top-sanctioned countries combined. It’s time to ask: who are they really helping? Activists often call on their leaders to sanction foreign governments they see as breaking human rights laws. We’re told that sanctions help protect civilians from their own, and neighbouring, oppressive regimes. But when civilian voices are left out of th...
Mar 28, 2025•38 min•Season 5Ep. 7
If you need help with drug addiction, you can find support here. Tickets for Unchained Nights here! Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically. This week, the TV show on everyone's mind: Adolescence. We discuss our reaction to the Netflix hit, whether showing the series in schools will do anything to change minds on misogyny, and how we can involve boys in the conversation ...
Mar 27, 2025•50 min
Content warning: baby loss "When a court sentences a pregnant woman to prison, they sentence her to a high risk pregnancy" There are hundreds of pregnant women in UK prisons - a third of them yet to actually be convicted of a crime. Babies born to women in prison are 7x more likely to be stillborn than the norm. In recent years, two babies died when their incarcerated mothers went into labour and their calls for help were ignored. Last month, harrowing stories emerged of women at HMP Bronzefield...
Mar 21, 2025•42 min•Season 5Ep. 6
Time for another weekly news debrief: Europe’s surging defence budgets and the hidden realities of the nuclear armament debate (03:09), the attack on benefits in our government and media - which are cutting more disability voices from the debate, than actual costs from the budget (10:07), and the overlooked importance of US airstrikes in Yemen (24:51). Plus, how Gaza’s ceasefire ended long before this week’s devastating airstrikes (30:39). Walk with us through the week’s top stories and learn ho...
Mar 20, 2025•39 min
Introducing...The News Meeting from our friends at Tortoise. Your Media Storm hosts Mathilda & Helena were invited on Tortoise's podcast to pitch a story we think should lead the news. Are welfare reforms Labour’s only hope of saving money ahead of the Spring Statement? Who are the hundreds of Venezuelans who have been forcibly removed from the US? And what is the media getting wrong when it comes to reporting on femicide by an intimate partner? We join Tortoise's Deputy Editor Giles Whittel...
Mar 18, 2025•3 min
This week, Media Storm investigates how universities handle sexual misconduct cases - when their prestigious professors are at the centre of the scandal. It all started when our intern, a student at LSE, told us about student activism stirring at her university, after a dozen sexual misconduct allegations against one male professor resulted in no disciplinary action for him - and several female staff resigning in protest. It’s not a secret that women drop out of academia at disproportionate rate...
Mar 13, 2025•43 min
This week, Media Storm delves into a vastly underreported topic - and one of the biggest potential barriers to gender equality, child welfare and family security. The UK has the least generous paternity leave entitlement in Europe, currently set at a measly two weeks. On the surface, maternity leave looks generous in length - but compared to OECD countries, the rate of pay is one of the lowest. As the government and media put culture wars over real-life policies, spread muddled misinformation ab...
Mar 07, 2025•48 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically. In this episode, we take you through the Media Storm mission: we’re not about conspiracy, we’re about media literacy. THAT Zelensky-Trump press conference set the tone for world news this week, as Western leaders rolled out red carpets and tried to decipher diplomatic rationale from clickbait MAGA politics. So who was the rude rep...
Mar 06, 2025•38 min
Warning: strong language For the first time since they wrapped filming, Mathilda, Jess, & Nathan from Channel 4's four-part documentary Go Back To Where You Came From are reunited! In the documentary, Mathilda traced a common refugee route from Somalia to the UK - alongside Jess, from a small town in Wales, and Nathan, a trucker from Barnsley. At the start of their journey, Nathan & Jess had very strong anti-immigration views. But by the final episode of the show, after talking to migran...
Feb 28, 2025•40 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Vote for Samfire to perform at Tramlines festival! Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically. One murder trial unfolding in the US has all the ingredients for a media storm: a child’s 'grandfather-like' figure becoming his fanaticised murderer. But the killer was motivated by anti-Palestinian radicalisation, and for that the mainstream media itself should be on trial. Perh...
Feb 27, 2025•44 min
Between the rise of the far-right and Israel’s ongoing warfare, today’s world is a feeding frenzy for antisemitism, and many Jewish people are afraid of prejudice and attack. But as many provocateurs turn antisemitism into a political weapon, the root causes of racism are being overlooked and enabled. All the while, the mainstream media has become a weapon of mass destruction in the war of words - often failing to spotlight the biggest drivers of hate. Is it possible to be anti-Zionist without b...
Feb 21, 2025•48 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically. The UK agreed to hand the Chagos Islands “back” to Mauritius. But colonial history makes this decision complicated - and crucially, Chagossians were excluded from the discussions… much like Ukraine this week, who were left out of US-Russia peace negotiations. This news made every front page, except for the Daily Mail who wrote abo...
Feb 20, 2025•31 min
It's Valentine's Day! A day full of overpriced chocolates, high expectations, and focus on how much sex you're going to have. So what about those who have no interest in it? 'Ace' is an umbrella term used to describe people who experience little, fluctuating, or no sexual attraction. There are also aromantic people - who experience little to no romantic attraction. Asexuality is often widely misunderstood, including within the LGBTQ+ community. Asexual people are also not recognised in legislati...
Feb 14, 2025•37 min•Season 5Ep. 2
! JOIN US AT SAMFIRE’S EP LAUNCH PARTY TONIGHT ! This week’s political news reads like a playbook in fascist propaganda - and rule number 1 is throwing minorities under the bus. Whether it’s Trump’s America, Merz’s Germany or Starmer’s Great Britain, leadership apparently now means bowing to the myths of the masses - myths the media has miserably failed to correct. Is there really a ‘migrant crime wave’? We review worldwide data to equip listeners with the facts missing from the mainstream media...
Feb 13, 2025•32 min
This week, we’ve decided to cover a topic that’s hugely underreported in the mainstream media: FGM. Yesterday was FGM Zero Tolerance Day, so you may have seen a (very small) flurry of articles about the topic - but this week's guests say that it needs to be covered all year round. FGM stands for Female Genital Mutilation - the deliberate cutting or removal of a female's external genitalia. It is currently documented in 92 countries around the world, the highest share in Africa - countries includ...
Feb 07, 2025•34 min•Season 5Ep. 1
